The award recognizes outstanding entrepreneurs who demonstrate excellence and extraordinary success in areas such as innovation, financial performance and personal commitment to their businesses and communities. Mr. Oates was selected by an independent panel of judges.

"I am deeply honored to have received this prestigious award from Ernst & Young," noted Denny Oates. "While I am the named winner, however, this award is truly recognition of the hard work, drive and determination of 725 dedicated individuals making up the Universal Stainless family. Working together, we continue to prove that both U.S. manufacturing in general and specialty steel manufacturing specifically are playing a very vital role today -- evidenced by the fact that Universal Stainless is growing, solidly profitable, adding jobs and competitively strong globally."

As a regional award winner, Mr. Oates is now eligible for consideration for the National Entrepreneur of the Year 2012 Award. Award winners in several national categories, as well as the National Entrepreneur of the Year Overall Award winner, which will be announced in November. The awards are the culminating event of the Ernst & Young Strategic Growth Forum, the nation's most prestigious gathering of high-growth, market-leading companies.

Now in its 26th year, the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Program has honored the inspirational leadership of such entrepreneurs as Jeff Bezos of Amazon.com, Michael Dell of Dell Inc., Herb Kelleher of Southwest Airlines, Fred Smith of FedEx, Larry Page and Sergey Brin of Google, Richard Schulze of Best Buy, Andrew Mason of Groupon, Mindy Grossman of HSN, Inc., Reid Hoffman and Jeff Weiner of LinkedIn, and many more.